2011 Stories by Brantley Hargrove

FEATURED STORY

published Dec 29, 2011

These days it seems as though both political parties are doing everything they can to disenfranchise one of the fastest-growing demographics in the country: Hispanics.
While the GOP ratchets up anti-...
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FEATURED STORY

published Dec 21, 2011

As we near the end of 2011, let us now look back on the year (without much fondness) and take stock. We racked up one of driest years in recorded history (more on that in a moment). The livestock and ...
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FEATURED STORY

published Dec 20, 2011

Over the course of the last month, both ERCOT and the North American Energy Reliability Corporation have warned of outages as early as next summer, due in large part, they say, to new regs issued by t...
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published Dec 16, 2011

​If you're planning on traversing Oak Lawn somewhere between Cedar Springs and Maple, don't. Pictured above is the sedan that plowed into a utility pole not long ago. As I just discovered during the...
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FEATURED STORY

published Dec 15, 2011

You've probably heard that an international contingent of physicists in Switzerland is this close to identifying the Higgs boson, aka the "God particle."
Currently, the Higgs is the theoretical mecha...
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published Dec 14, 2011

"Jesus didn't want us to have a trial this close to his birthday," Steven Phillips's attorney, Tom McKenzie, said yesterday. He was joking, we're pretty sure.
His point: That the prospect of an ex-wi...
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FEATURED STORY

published Dec 12, 2011

Steven Phillips spent 25 years in prison as an innocent man for a string of rapes he didn't commit. He was exonerated in 2008 based on DNA evidence. He has always said life is much more complicated ou...
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FEATURED STORY

published Dec 08, 2011

For folks in Dallas, where the council-appointed gas drilling task force is running to stand still, or in Southlake, the subject of a recent cover story on towns grappling with urban drilling, this EP...
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published Dec 08, 2011

Emissions of cancer- and central nervous system defect-causing toxic air pollution put Texas power plants atop the pile of serial polluters, a report based on EPA data finds. Nationwide, pollution con...
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FEATURED STORY

published Dec 07, 2011

Texas cattle country lost some 600,000 head this year -- a 12-percent reduction in the herd -- driven by a drought that withered grasses and baked river beds and stock ponds. It's the kind of en masse...
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published Dec 06, 2011

It's been nearly six months since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton issued a memo to his subordinates, which we'll translate from bureaucrat-speak for you: Look, we got sca...
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FEATURED STORY

published Dec 02, 2011

Ever since the EPA announced new pollution regs that would come down hardest on dirty power plants, there's been considerable Sturm und Drang from the industry, who've been making all sorts of dire pr...
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FEATURED STORY

published Dec 01, 2011

On Tuesday we told you about a report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation -- an entity tasked by the feds with ensuring the lights stay on -- that singled out Texas as a state tha...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 29, 2011

It was early November when watchdog group Downwinders At Risk found out that Dallas-Fort Worth had set off air-quality monitors more times than Houston in 2011. Yep, America's petrochemical hub violat...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 29, 2011

Get ready for more rolling blackouts, because according to a grid reliability report, Texas won't have the juice to meet peak demands by 2013.
The study, authored by grid reliability enforcer North A...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 23, 2011

Researchers at UT Southwestern published a study in the journal Nature Sunday identifying a cancer-specific metabolic pathway that fuels only the growth of certain kinds of kidney and adrenal tumors. ...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 21, 2011

Denton County Judge Bruce McFarling declared a mistrial Friday when it was found that Seth Winder of The Colony -- who is accused of allegedly murdering and dismembering his lover in the man's Far Nor...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 18, 2011

His family, defense attorneys -- even the bailiffs and the transport drivers -- noticed something was different about Seth Winder, who is standing trial in a Denton County court for allegedly murderin...
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published Nov 17, 2011

As if this case wasn't already weird enough, it got weirder on Wednesday in Denton County court. According to prosecutors, in September 2008 Seth Winder murdered his lover, a beloved, longtime Walmart...
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published Nov 16, 2011

Sometime late in the night of September 3, 2008, prosecutors say The Colony resident Seth Winder, then 29, murdered his lover, dismembered his body, and hauled the pieces out to the dumpster of the vi...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 11, 2011

A lawsuit filed by three Dallas exonerees against their high-powered personal injury lawyer has finally come to an end after more than two testy years. The dispute was over fees charged for more than ...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 11, 2011

Stephen Benavides, an organizer with the United Steelworkers, was one of eight arrested Saturday at the Occupy Dallas protest at the downtown Bank of America tower during Bank Transfer Day, aimed at e...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 09, 2011

The University of Texas released the preliminary results today of that comprehensive study on the controversial natural gas producing process known as hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), drawing no li...
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FEATURED STORY

published Nov 08, 2011

Get ready for remedial history, college-bound Texans, because the statewide blueprint that dictates what you learn in high school isn't doing you any favors -- a longstanding tradition in public secon...
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